And you already have to say, early as it is, that the New York Knicks chose wisely.
For all he purportedly lacks as a leader, Anthony has spent the first month of the season reminding everyone that he remains blessed with the sort of build-around-me scoring talent that can be matched by very few in this game. Put the proper role-playing pieces in place -- surround him with fast thinkers and blame-takers -- and Year 10 Melo still looks like the sort of player, for a franchise going on 40 years since its last parade, worth whatever it takes to get him. No matter what sort of letdowns, headaches and dramas come along with the package.
The mix around Melo has to be right, just right, to talk seriously about his team in the championship conversation, but the Knicks just might have pulled it off. I can't sit here and say that I saw this coming in September, or even October, but I've been quickly sold on the idea that the Knicks have indeed assembled a more convincing version of the 2008-09 Denver Nuggets, who rank as the only squad Anthony managed to drag beyond the first round of the playoffs.
What the Knicks have done, when you really look at it, is borrow from the Nuggets' template and two more blueprints that took things a step further and delivered the ultimate prize. There are echoes, too, of the 2011 Dallas Mavericks and the 2012 U.S. Olympic team in New York's locker room, with Jason Kidd brought in to be Anthony's new Chauncey Billups ... and with Kidd and Tyson Chandler reunited to help navigate for Melo as they did for Dirk Nowitzki's career-changing breakthrough ... and with shooters and depth and, most of all, defensive-minded veteran know-how that lets Anthony focus on what he does better than any Knick since Bernard King.
On Team USA, Anthony isn't asked to lead or set examples. All he has to do is score that thing and heed the wise men all around him. The ultimate judgment on these Knicks won't come until Amar'e Stoudemire comes back and we see how he handles the unavoidable move to a sixth-man role most doubt he can accept, but the rising hype around the Knicks stems from more than a mere flying 8-2 start. It emanates from the growing realization that the Knicks' overhaul actually has narrowed Melo's responsibilities and accentuated his gifts.
"They're making me better," Anthony says of Kidd, Chandler and New York's lower-profile sages: Marcus Camby, Kurt Thomas and yes, Rasheed Wallace.
"They're doing it to me."
One afternoon at the London Olympics, Anthony tried to leave the impression that he could tune out all of the post-Linsanity negativity shoveled his way, insisting to ESPN.com: "I don't really deal with haters. I'm tired of 'em. It is what it is." But for the bulk of the summer, Anthony himself could be heard promising a different, better-than-ever Melo for the coming season. He was the one who happily volunteered memories of Beijing in 2008 and what a meaningful springboard that was for him just a few months before the Nuggets traded for Billups.
Asked just the other night about his own time working as a sixth man in London in support of LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant and Chris Paul, specifically the theory that six weeks in their company forced him to work toward changing his reputation, Melo acknowledged: "If you don't come back a better player after spending time with those guys, something is wrong."
Yet Kidd showed up in Gotham taking nothing for granted. He's the first person I know to toss out the increasingly popular parallels between the Knicks of today and the Mavs of 2010-11 and has made it a priority, in concert with Chandler and coach Mike Woodson, to keep challenging Anthony to make the extra pass, trust his teammates more when swarmed and stay more plugged in defensively than he's ever been.
One of their go-to lines, according to one practice-floor spy, is needling Anthony about how they got Nowitzki to play D in Dallas and how embarrassed they'd be for No. 7 if he doesn't keep up.
"To me, he's the best player in the league right now," Chandler said Wednesday night of Anthony, conveniently forgetting how well he knows LeBron's game to build up his guy.
Although he was somewhat resistant to likening the Knicks' one-star construction to the Mavs' approach two seasons ago -- "I hate to compare anything, but there's definitely similarities," Chandler said -- New York would appear to have a point or two in its favor that the 2011 champions lacked. Steve Novak and J.R. Smith give the Knicks two elite shooters off their bench, irrespective of what happens with Stoudemire and eventual returnee Iman Shumpert. Woodson, sporting that sparkling regular-season mark of 26-8 since replacing D'Antoni, likewise has no shortage of bigs on that bench for those inevitable situations when Anthony, as a small-balling power forward, might need to be flanked by more size. The presence of